New Book Paints Different Picture of Workplace Behavior At Google and Facebook

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: In Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom), Adam Fisher paints quite a different picture of life at now-workforce behavior preachers Google and Facebook, revealing that the tech giants' formative days were filled with the kind of antics that run afoul of HR protocols. Google was not a normal place, begins an excerpt in Vanity Fair that includes some juicy quotes attributed to Google executive chef Charlie Ayers about Google's founders ("Sergey's the Google playboy. He was known for getting his fingers caught in the cookie jar with employees that worked for the company in the masseuse room. He got around.") And in Sex, Beer, and Coding, Wired runs an excerpt about Facebook's wild early days, which even extended to the artwork gracing its office ("The office was on the second floor, so as you walk in you immediately have to walk up some stairs, and on the big 10-foot-high wall facing you is just this huge buxom woman with enormous breasts wearing this Mad Max-style costume riding a bulldog. It's the most intimidating, totally inappropriate thing. [...] That set a tone for us. A huge-breasted warrior woman riding a bulldog is the first thing you see as you come in the office, so like, get ready for that!" So, what changed? "When Sheryl Sandberg joined the company is when I saw a vast shift in everything in the company," said Ayers about Google. Sandberg later became Facebook's grown-up face.

Comments

If you get all worked up ...

[Qbertino]

... about a Picasso/Graffiti original depicting a busty comic girl and a cartoon dog, then you should probably leave.

To me the binge drinking contests would've been more off-putting.

I bet dollars to donuts that the stuff that brought Google or Facebook ahead wasn't built by the people who would do binge drinking contests at work. This nonsense is usually done by marketing or community management.

The stuff that brings these companies ahead are built by people who come in, solve the problem, collect their salary and then leave again.

Acting like an asshole is usually done by, well, assholes.

Maybe its time to admit...

[Jarwulf]

90% of what is now classified as 'sexually inappropriate' behavior is normal evolutionarily derived behavior. And the vast majority of mentally normal people would ultimately be happier living away from the convents decreed by nuns or their modern day equivalents, women's studies professors.

Re:Maybe its time to admit...

[alvinrod]

While that is probably more true than some would care to admit, I don't know if work is the place for any of that. I suppose that if you have men and women working together, you're inevitably going to get office romances. Trying to prevent that may be a cure worse than the disease, and I suspect that anyone who can't keep their professional and personal lives sufficiently separate is probably not a great worker anyways. However, people should try to keep things a little more discreet. People can chase down their primal urges on their own time.

I suppose I wouldn't want to outlaw someone running a business that way described in the summary if that's what they want. I'm just not sure that I'd care to work there.

Re:In other words...

[blindseer]

I expect that James Damore will never see a courtroom with his case against Google. He'll get a big fat pay-off out of court, and Google will make some kind of half apology where they say they did not fire anyone over comments over hiring practices and that they'll never do it again. After that I expect Damore to find work in his own company doing whatever it is he likes to do, and make appearances on TV shows and on the speaking circuit for most anyone that asks. Any other outcome will not be near as good for Google.